Computing Linux, BSD, Qubes; and Other Alternative Systems - What Distro Is on Your Windows?

[Mr. Krinkle]

i have not. compatible with ubuntu bins is actually really useful.

bioinformaticians who only learned to code to do biology are some of the most egregiously awful programmers ever. so a lot of my software i've had to tinker with makefiles, edit code, whatever, if i can just run the executables that makes OS reinstallation much less daunting than the prospect of doing that all again.....

That's what nomorebenzos and i are hoohoo and haha'ing about - Linux Mint

i've been using it since version 9 which came out around 2010, and they're on version 20 now, and i think it's flawless and ive seen it progress - i really think it's great - super easy to use and they have a forum where they can answer anything....but there's no Lounge there


give it a shot, i think you'd really like it - i think everybody should try Mint to be honest

Home - Linux Mint

Linux Mint is an elegant, easy to use, up to date and comfortable desktop operating system.

www.linuxmint.com

 

[Mr. Krinkle]

I don't see a password manager

i use Lockwise in Firefox

 

[Jabberwocky]

right so which one of you is going to come to my house and install mint for me then?

i have a friend who actively enjoys sysadmin, i should probably get him to help. i'm so scared of fucking it up given that computer is my livelihood

 

[thujone]

am i the only one that thninks giving the passwords to our entire lives to companies we don't know about, and not even knowing the passwords ourselves, might be a bad idea?

all my nerd friends use them but i don't trust them.

eta: i get that the companies don't have the passwords themselves, and ideally even encrypted versions never even leave the device. but it still freaks me out.

KeePass is a local file manager, it isn't sent to a cloud somewhere. That said, backing up the password file is the best thing to do with it.

I'm not particularly worried about someone stealing my encrypted passwords file from my cloud account. I am worried about the greater possibility of drive failure taking my main password file with it and needing it backed up as many convenient places as possible to quickly restore access to my digital life.

 

[Mr. Krinkle]

right so which one of you is going to come to my house and install mint for me then?

i have a friend who actively enjoys sysadmin, i should probably get him to help. i'm so scared of fucking it up given that computer is my livelihood

chinny im telling ya - its super simple - it holds your hand the whole way if you do a fresh install - if you're gonna partition, that might be the only slightly difficult thing, but even that, they hold your hand through it - you would just have to decide how much space to allocate

other than that, it's all just a few basic steps like entering your name and making a password

if you're nervous, move everything you need to an external hard drive and start fresh - then you dont have to worry about anything

but really - it's so easy a caveman can do it

 

[Conky]

Have you tried linux mint? It comes with more drivers and codecs and other annoying stuff that ubuntu doesn't have. Best out of the box support for pretty much everything, compatible with all ubuntu bins.

Ha, I've got some strange cheap hardware and the sound card is not recognised. Just says dummy output. Got a Bluetooth speaker last night which worked initially and now it's paired but won't connect.

How many laptops cost 390$, have a 15.6 screen, ship with 8GB RAM, 120GB HD, and W10 pro?

 

[Jabberwocky]

chinny im telling ya - its super simple - it holds your hand the whole way if you do a fresh install - if you're gonna partition, that might be the only slightly difficult thing, but even that, they hold your hand through it - you would just have to decide how much space to allocate

sounds easier and less likely to brick my computer than randomly deleting bits of the kernel in anger next time it decides to update and lose its graphics card. no need to partition. and its set up such that the OS is on its own smaller hard drive and my home dir is on another. would still back up first though.

 

[Mr. Krinkle]

sounds easier and less likely to brick my computer than randomly deleting bits of the kernel in anger next time it decides to update and lose its graphics card. no need to partition. and its set up such that the OS is on its own smaller hard drive and my home dir is on another. would still back up first though.

definitely easier - yea you're all set then - you'd be fine

i honestly wish i wasn't overly satisfied with Mint so it would force me to check out some other distros

MX Linux would be one i'd like to test run....i used Ubuntu about 5 years ago but i'd like to see that again too just for the kicks

Manjaro looks interesting

 

[Conky]

definitely easier - yea you're all set then - you'd be fine

i honestly wish i wasn't overly satisfied with Mint so it would force me to check out some other distros

MX Linux would be one i'd like to test run....i used Ubuntu about 5 years ago but i'd like to see that again too just for the kicks

Manjaro looks interesting

Zorin OS is pretty cool too

 

[Conky]

Founder of QubesOS

 

[Mr. Krinkle]

so how many and which OS's have you tested out recently? @nomorebenzos

 

[Conky]

so how many and which OS's have you tested out recently? @nomorebenzos

Android 12, Parrot, ZorinOS, Linux Mint, ChromeOS, Windows 11, iPadOS, and GrapheneOS

Using the last 4 currently, all for different purposes. I keep my digital life compartmentalized as much as possible.

Back in 2013 I was targeted by a hacker who doesn't need to phish people to hack them. He exploits unpatched vulnerabilities in your OS. He's from Israel so probably has military experience doing this stuff. He can also hack smartphones simply by knowing the number. So I never give out my real number to anyone in case they are compromised. Due to this I keep my most sensitive data on my Chromebook and GrapheneOS phone as they are harder to exploit than the others.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Founder of QubesOS

i have come to disagree with the trustworthiness of this part of this. in theory it should be, and when you have a well run project with someone competent calling the shots it does work like that. for example, even though i'm not and never will be a kernel developer my understanding is that its difficult to get anything egregiously stupid past linus torvalds. i had a friend who worked for canonical and he didn't find anything too intolerable about their dev processes so that's a good sign.

huge projects like OS's, with organisational structures in place to support them, this works for.

but a lot of smaller open source projects are fucking shit. we've been telling people anyone can code so everyone has got this idea that they, personally can code, without seemingly putting any effort in to learning proper dev practises. i dunno, i'm jaded by biosciences. the number of papers that outright lie about what their code can do, like support polyploid organisms or long genomes, then you look in the code and they are literally hard coded for diploid or genomes no longer than 100 Mb, respectively. and once they've got the paper out they no longer give a shit so there is no support for the software. my point is, the tweet applies in that context OS's, but a lot of people mistakenly apply it to all open source software, and in that they are very, very wrong.

eta: i know this applies to all software, i've seen proprietary software that was unbelievably shit too. but a lot of people seem to place open source on a pedestal, but without a community helping the project, it doesn't really work....

 

[Mr. Krinkle]

Android 12, Parrot, ZorinOS, Linux Mint, ChromeOS, Windows 11, iPadOS, and GrapheneOS

Using the last 4 currently, all for different purposes. I keep my digital life compartmentalized as much as possible.

Back in 2013 I was targeted by a hacker who doesn't need to phish people to hack them. He exploits unpatched vulnerabilities in your OS. He's from Israel so probably has military experience doing this stuff. He can also hack smartphones simply by knowing the number. So I never give out my real number to anyone in case they are compromised. Due to this I keep my most sensitive data on my Chromebook and GrapheneOS phone as they are harder to exploit than the others.

so the only ones we care about are Parrot, Zorin, and Mint - the others are for different devices and we never care about windows

which one of those 3 did you like? you wiped out Mint already?

 

[Conky]

so the only ones we care about are Parrot, Zorin, and Mint - the others are for different devices and we never care about windows

which one of those 3 did you like? you wiped out Mint already?

I like Parrot the most. The anonsurf feature is awesome. You can visit onion sites while using Firefox or Chromium. When I erased W11 and installed Parrot, the sound card was no longer recognized and there was DNS problems. Resolv.conf.

So I installed Mint and had same problems with sound card. Dummy Output. Got a bluetooth speaker which worked initially but after a reboot stopped connecting. So I bought a Windows 10 license and installed. Then upgraded to W11. Same sound card issue but no problems with bluetooth speaker. I think the issue is cheap hardware. Might get a 17.3" laptop and install Zorin or Mint. They both look great so it's a tough decision. The new Parrot release is based on Debian stable which means outdated software which I hate.

 

[Mr. Krinkle]

i like the big laptops too

next one i buy i want the 17.3

 

[Conky]

Friendly reminder: Windows is malicious software

Microsoft Windows Hosts

Microsoft Windows as Malware, Windows Insecurity, Windows Backdoors, Windows User Freedoms Restrictions, Windows Surveillance, Other Windows Abuses, Inescapable Telemetry

www.kicksecure.com

 

[Dansteely]

A company I used to work for was wiping the contents of and getting rid of old hardware, so I scored myself a fairly decent laptop i7 16gb ram etc... and rather than clog it up with windows, loaded ubuntu on it. Runs what I want like a dream (its on 24/7 have had a disk fail but that's it).

 

[Joey]

Puppy is what I'm running on an old Dell PC now.

 

[Joey]

A company I used to work for was wiping the contents of and getting rid of old hardware, so I scored myself a fairly decent laptop i7 16gb ram etc... and rather than clog it up with windows, loaded ubuntu on it. Runs what I want like a dream (its on 24/7 have had a disk fail but that's it).

Windows ME is a good option if you want something that's historically great in it's impact across computing and comes with a small footprint on your resources. It's the best.